Abolitionist history of Michigan

December 30, 2012

• January 1837: Michigan is admitted to the Union as the 26th state and a free state.

• 1839: William M. Sullivan of Jackson launches the American Freeman, the first anti-slavery newspaper in Michigan. Later in the year, it becomes the Michigan Freeman.

• 1841: Ann Arbor abolitionists begin publishing a national anti-slavery newspaper, the Signal of Liberty. It becomes the voice of the Liberty Party, a pre-Republican abolitionist political party.

• 1841: Sarah and Adam Crosswhite and four of their children escape enslavement by Francis Giltner in Carroll County, Ky. The family settles in Michigan in Marshall. However, in 1847, slave catchers find the family and attempt to take them back to slavery. The people of Marshall protect the Crosswhite family. The slave catchers are arrested and tried for assault.

• 1848: In what would become a groundbreaking legal case about the rights of slave owners to reclaim their "property," Francis Giltner successfully sues one of the Marshall citizens to recover the costs of his lost slaves.

• 1850: On the heels of cases like Crosswhites', Congress enacts the Fugitive Slave Law. It requires federal marshals to help recapture former slaves or face a $1,000 fine for deliberately neglecting to do so. If someone escaped while held by a marshal, the marshal had to forfeit the full value that a slave owner claimed they were owed for the person or people who escaped. Anyone found guilty of encouraging and supporting escapees could be fined and imprisoned for up to six months. Recaptured slaves could not testify against white people.

• July 6, 1854: A convention of abolitionist men meets "Under the Oaks" in Jackson in what is widely accepted to be the first meeting of a new political party called the Republican Party.

• 1855: Erastus Hussey, a member of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society and the Michigan Senate, introduces and helps to pass the Michigan Personal Freedoms Acts, which grant escaped slaves in Michigan the right to seek court protection against recapture.